Brought to You by www.SEPP.org, The Science and Environmental Policy Project

By Ken Haapala, President

McKitrick-Christy Hypothesis Test: Last week’s TWTW discussed a test on the ability of climate models (a mean of the models used) to describe a 60 year-warming of slivers a layer of the atmosphere as measured by instruments in weather balloons. The area of the atmosphere of interest is the tropical troposphere at 200 to 300 millibar, about 30,000 to 40,000 feet (9100 to 12200m). Three different radiosonde data sets are used. For the averages from the models they use all 102 model runs in the CMIP5 archive.

(Bloomberg) — Chicago’s public pension debt is $36 billion and growing, it’s facing $550 million in budget deficits over the next three years and this summer the state had to bail out a school system that was flirting with insolvency.

“They owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street,” Donald Trump told Geraldo Rivera. “We’re going to have to wipe that out. That’s going to have to be — you know, you can say goodbye to that. I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs but whoever it is, you can wave goodbye to that.”

Bond markets didn’t appreciate the verbal wave. The territory’s bonds, already weak from the pounding of Hurricane Maria, fell another 31 percent. White House budget director Mick Mulvaney hastened to say the president didn’t mean what he said. “I wouldn’t take it word for word with that,” he said demurely. Nor should you; as debt expert Cate Long told CNN Money, “Trump does not have the ability to wave a magic wand and wipe out the debt.”

The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is in the throes of a debt crisis that recently reached a breaking point when it missed a $422 million bond payment due May 2nd. When asked in a subsequent interview about the likelihood of making future payments on the remaining $72 billion of debt, Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla noted that the U.S. territory “does not anticipate having the money.”

Even a cursory review of Puerto Rico’s finances confirms Padilla’s claim of insolvency. The government is expecting deficits to grow from $14-$16 billion over the next five years, and for revenue to fall by $1.7 billion over that same five-year period. To makes matters worse the U.S. territory’s unemployment rate is a lofty 12.2 percent.

The problem is simple: Puerto Rico’s debt burden is equal to over 100% of its GDP when including the $43 billion worth of unfunded pension liabilities. This situation is exacerbated by falling population growth and perpetually shrinking GDP.

The US is causing high unemployment, high and growing public debt, and an increasing reliance on handouts among the citizens of Puerto Rico. US federal laws are killing what could be a Free Market success in this territorial “possession.” Peter Schiff discusses below, the particulars of US stupidity on the island, making Puerto Rico another Greece waiting to happen, and he outlines easy solutions to the US caused socialistic destruction.

While Greece is now dominating the debt default stage, the real tragedy is playing out much closer to home, with the downward spiral of Puerto Rico. As in Greece, the Puerto Rican economy has been destroyed by its participation in an unrealistic monetary system that it does not control and the failure of domestic politicians to confront their own insolvency.